


And You Fall (And You Drown)

by AuroraKant



Series: Whumptober2020 [11]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Batfamily, Crying, Dissociation, Due To Grief/Shock, Feels, Gen, Grief, Hurt No Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Poetic Language, This Will Get You In Your Feels, a tiny bit of murder, broken down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/pseuds/AuroraKant
Summary: Silence settled over him, his sobs so small and unimportant in the vastness of the universe. People said death was silent – Jason had found it to be loud. The explosion that had taken his life had been loud… Joker’s laughter had been scathing… there was little he remembered from being dead, but he knew it wasn’t quiet.But maybe grief was.Or: Alfred Pennyworth dies... and Jason Todd falls apart.Day 12:Broken Down| Broken Bone | Broken Trust
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd
Series: Whumptober2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948651
Comments: 12
Kudos: 82
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	And You Fall (And You Drown)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lulaypp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lulaypp/gifts).



> I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY NOW FORI!!! BE SAD ABOUT THIS!!  
> -cough-  
> Anyhow... welcome fair readers to the Jason Todd days - a three day special of wonderful Jason Todd whump! :D  
> Comments, Love, Kudos, Bookmarks and Feedback make me extremely happy! <3<3<3

The beginning to the end of Jason Todd felt like a normal Thursday night.

He was out on patrol as Red Hood, ignoring the senseless chatter happening via the comms, when Batman’s voice broke through the tides of noise:

“Batman to… Batman to all vigilantes currently operating in the field.”

Silence fell. Batman never addressed all of them, Bruce careful to only ever talk to the person he meant to be talking to. This had to be important. This had to be bad.

Especially since all of them had heard the quiver in his voice.

Jason could feel the dread pooling in his stomach long before Bruce managed to say anything, his heart turning into lead long before the next words could crush it:

“Penny One… Penny One died tonight, Thursday the 12th of July, at 1:30 am in his sleep. Please return to the Cave as fast as possible. Batman over.”

It was all facts. All business. And yet Jason could hear the faint shaking of Bruce’s voice. He could hear the way Batman was wringing desperately for some sort of control. For some kind of normality.

Only that nothing would ever be normal again. Only that nothing would ever be okay again.

Bruce had stayed back at the Cave because Alfred had the flu. The rest of them had gone out knowing that Alfred was in good hands, that Alfred would be cared for. Bruce and Jason still fought more often than not, but they could always agree when it came to the man in question, when it came to Alfred.

And now… and now Alfred was supposed to be dead. Killed by the common flu, while none of them suspected anything wrong. While the rest of them laughed and joked and lived.

The comms were silent still, all of them processing, none of them believing.

Jason wanted the world to stop. He wanted time to comply and end its tyrannical rule, he wanted the universe to bend and break and twist… he wanted the knowledge back that Alfred was untouchable. That Alfred was forever.

Jason should have known better – Nothing was forever. Not love. Not life. Not fate, nor destiny. And apparently… not even Alfred Pennyworth.

The universe continued to exist, and Gotham continued to be a shithole in the depths of Tartarus.

The Red Hood watched as two wanted burglars crossed the street beneath him, entering the alley Jason was perched on top off. He watched as they climbed higher and higher on the fire escape until they stopped in front of a window.

He should stop them.

It was the Red Hood’s job to protect the weakest and poorest of Gotham, it was his job to make sure not another family would fall victim to two men, who liked to see others suffer. But… but his body wouldn’t move. All he could do was sit and watch and let the message sink in: Alfred was dead.

Alfred Pennyworth, a man of culture and class and sass, was dead.

The first person to look at Jason and see true worth, the first person to forgive him when he came back… _was dead_.

What was he supposed to do now?

Who would call on his birthday and on his death-day just to make sure that Jason was doing okay?

Who would bake the perfect cookies during the holidays from now on, with just enough sass to get Jason to stay?

Who would stand between him and Bruce now … making this family almost feel like just that _, a family_?

Alfred was gone, and Jason had no idea what came next.

The burglars in front of him had managed to get the window to open, the first one disappearing in the darkened apartment, the second one following shortly. He should stop them. He should just… but he couldn’t move.

He was useless, the tears burning hot behind his eyelids.

But he couldn’t cry. Not yet. If he started to let his sorrow spill, he would be unable to stop. He would drown in his own sadness, choked by emotions so deep, so strong they had always been his enemy. People liked to paint Jason as cruel, but he was only soaked in feelings – were other people loved, and cried, and mourned, and raged with their head and their heart in unity… Jason was swallowed, consumed by the fire in his chest and the emotions in his heart.

Sometimes Jason felt a bit like Tinkerbell from the original Peter Pan novel: She, as well, could only feel one emotion at a time, always completely consumed by that one thing raging in her veins, be it lust or pain or happiness.

Jason couldn’t fall victim to his own faults just yet, couldn’t let himself drown.

There was a crime happening in front of his very eyes, and yet his legs were lead, his heart was stone.

He should move. He needed to move.

The comm unit came back to life:

“Understood. Nightwing ETA five minutes. Over.”

“O-Okay… Um, I’ll be there in twenty. Batgirl, Over.”

“I’m… give me thirty. Red Robin, Over.”

“ETA Robin and me ten minutes. Black Bat, Over.”

Silence once more. Jason should talk, inform them of his status, and the crime he had to stop first, but not even his own voice would follow his command. He should… he should… it was always _should_ and yet he couldn’t do anything.

It was Oracle’s voice that came next, her tone careful and precise:

“Red Hood? Do you copy?”

He couldn’t answer. It was too hard. Too painful. Too real.

“Red Hood, if you don’t copy, I’ll have to track you. Please, just say something.”

But what? What could he possibly say that would make this alright again? What could he do that would sooth his heart and heal his soul?

Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing he or anyone else could do.

“I’m tracking you.” – the sound of keys being hit with impossible speed and precision audible through the comm – “Tracking the Red Hood now. Please, just answer Ja-“

There was movement in the apartment across from him, and suddenly moving was easy again, his hand rising to his helmet, dismantling the comm unit. He didn’t need Babs’s voice in his ear for this – he needed… ( ~~Alfred back~~ ) some blood on his hands.

It wasn’t conscious thought when his body moved, it was training he’d been repeating ever since he was a kid, when he stood up. Ever since he put the scaly pants on for the first time. He didn’t _need_ to think, when he jumped down from the ledge of the roof and fired his grapple.

It felt good not to think.

The second goon had barely entered the apartment, when Jason’s boots connected with his back, pushing both of them completely into the room. It ended with the man sprawled on the floor, Jason’s two-hundred-pound body kneeling on top. The man struggled weakly – but there was nothing he could do, with Jason unwilling to move.

Easy. _Too easy_?

Jason looked up only to stare into the barrel of a gun. The first goon – the burglar, who entered while Jason had done nothing but watch. Jason wanted to be fast. His fist was ready to knock some sense into the bastard, when his ears registered another sound.

His blood ran cold.

The crying of a child was barely audible through the door behind the burglar. Jason knew that kind of crying. It was the crying of a child absolutely devastated. Jason had cried like this too, once upon a time.

No, he had cried like this twice: Once when he found his mother sleeping the endless sleep on their couch, and the second time when the clock on the bomb ticked down and Jason realized nobody would ever safe him again.

His gaze focused back on the burglar in front of him.

On the man who had made a kid cry. A poor, defenseless child.

Alfred would tsk right about now, telling Jason to get his head out of his ass in that polite British voice of his but… but Alfred was dead. Maybe that was why he did it. Maybe that was why Jason didn’t stop himself.

He was faster and better and quicker than the man in front of him.

He was the Red Hood.

He fired two bullets into the brain of that asshole pointing a gun at him, before the man could flinch. The burglar never even stood a chance. Jason was somewhere else, when he watched the body drop, the crying of the child only growing louder.

It was as if he was living through a dream, the shock of Alfred’s death finally catching up to him, as he raised his gun and fired another bullet into the back of the man he was kneeling on. The struggling ceased, the body growing lifeless beneath his boots, as the blood spread over the floor.

Jason stood up and holstered his gun, leaving the scene and the child behind.

Someone would be here soon enough. Oracle said she was tracking him. The neighbors would hopefully report the gunshots.

Someone would find the child. Someone would make sure that everything would be alright.

(only that nothing would ever be okay ever again)

Jason made it three rooftops before the reality of what he had just done hit him.

He had killed two men. Two burglars. And maybe they were assholes that killed their victims, or maybe they were dumbasses who had stumbled across an unlucky streak. Jason didn’t know. All he knew was that he had killed them.

He had shot them.

They weren’t the Black Mask, they weren’t the Joker, fuck, they probably weren’t even drug dealers or murderers or rapists. They were robbers… the Red Hood didn’t kill robbers.

Except for today.

Except for when he did.

He fumbled with his helmet, the nausea so strong he couldn’t breath filtered air for even a moment longer. The plastic made a tock sound when it hit the gravel, Jason’s retching soon joining the background noise of a standard Gotham night.

Alfred was dead, and Jason had killed someone for the first time in years.

Alfred was dead, and the blood on Jason’s hands was not even the blood of a monster – it was the blood of two assholes who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That was when the tears hit.

It started with a big sob, tearing his throat and making him scream.

Alfred was dead and Jason had shot his future to hell.

His shoulders were heaving, his chest was tight – there was no air, no absolution, tonight. He was alone on top of a roof, only the smog and the darkness as a companion… his heart was breaking, and every shard that fell, was a piece Alfred would have saved.

Who was Jason if no one believed in him? Who was Jason if all of them were right?

It was hard to see anything through the tears blurring his vison, through the hiccups hurting his lungs… but Jason didn’t have to see to be able to tell that Gotham was no longer the same. And how could it be? Alfred Pennyworth was dead.

He was shaking, Jason noted distantly. _He was falling apart._

Silence settled over him, his sobs so small and unimportant in the vastness of the universe. People said death was silent – Jason had found it to be loud. The explosion that had taken his life had been loud… Joker’s laughter had been scathing… there was little he remembered from being dead, but he knew it wasn’t quiet.

But maybe grief was.

Maybe the deep sense of sorrow settling in every single bone Jason possessed… was silent. Stifling. It felt like a room with closed windows, like a closet with a lost key… everything was damp and dusty and so, so lonely.

Death hadn’t been silent, but mourning Alfred all Jason wished for was someone telling him that it wasn’t true. He wished for someone to break that suffocating dread. To free him. To allow him to breathe again.

But no one came. Instead a light was lit in all this darkness… the Batsignal.

Someone had switched on the Batsignal, in this night of grief and pain. Jason knew that maybe for the first time in its history, nobody would come to answer its call, no matter how bright the light was against the oppressing clouds hanging over Gotham.

No one would come, because all of them were grief-stricken.

But someone would come for Jason.

Someone would come and see what he had done. They would see the blood he spilled, the pain he brough, they would see the murder on his hands, they would see how much he had forsaken…

Jason had to leave.

He stood up; his boots silent as he started to run towards his apartment. He ran and ran and ran. Bruce hadn’t just lost his father tonight, no, Jason had also broken Bruce’s heart. He had killed, when he promised not to. He had hurt, when Batman had trusted Red Hood to heal.

It wasn’t a big distance Jason tried to cross, and yet every step felt giant, every second passing by way too short. Soon his family would see what he had done, soon they would notice how far he had fallen.

He had done his best to fly with the flock again, had tried so hard to be Bruce’s son… but in the end it had been Alfred who had saved Jason time and time again, Alfred who connected and railed him in.

And now… and now Alfred was gone.

No more cookies, and shared hatred of chamomile tea, no more English literature and Shakespearean plays, no more Sunday brunches and midnight snacks… Alfred was dead. And Jason has signed his own death warrant as well.

He reached his apartment, not bothering with dismantling the alarms. It wasn’t as if Oracle couldn’t follow his every step anyways… though Jason had the feeling she had other things to worry about. His escape wasn’t her priority, Alfred shaping a big part of her life as well. She wouldn’t be searching for him – at least not yet. _But soon enough_.

His apartment was… cozy. It was a loft, with a big kitchen, lot of bookshelves and secret crates for his weapons and equipment. He had spent months creating this space, had selected every book and every piece of furniture by hand… and now he would have to leave it behind.

 _He couldn’t stay_.

He was quick when he sorted through his stuff, packing two bags. One containing Red Hood’s equipment, the other one containing Jason Todd’s life.

Who was Jason Todd?

If you looked at his bag, Jason Todd was a ratty red hoodie and a pair of dark jeans, an Argentinian cookbook, and a collection of Jane Austen’s classics, mixed with Norwegian Forests by Haruki Murakami. He was the framed picture of a skiing trip, and a copy of adoption papers. He was the necessities as well: a toothbrush, underwear, and some pain meds.

Jason Todd was a masterpiece of broken parts.

His apartment might tell you something else, might show you promises of a man he could have been, but Jason had decided to leave that man behind.

He was breathing hard by the time morning came, the tears never really stopping ever since he had first broken down. His time in Gotham was over. It was time for someone else. Something else.

Something far away from a family he could disappoint, and a grandfather who could die. Something far away from his own hopes and dreams and expectations.

Jason Todd had fallen because he had dared to dream and love.

He couldn’t bear to fall again, couldn’t stand this pain any longer.

With a bang the door fell closed behind him. With a bang his old life ended and someone else took the first step of theirs.

It was still Thursday the 12th of July, when Jason Todd ended and something new began, leaving behind a grieving family, two dead men… and an apartment that spoke of a failed attempt at healing.


End file.
